We’ll take up the new SkyDrive in a detailed article very soon but let us first focus on, what I believe, is the most important piece of information in this whole announcement – the free storage space that used to be a whopping 25 GB is now being reduced to a mere 7 GB (when compared to 25 GB) and new SkyDrive users will have to be content with that. Wait, there’s more. The existing SkyDrive users will keep getting 25 GB free space only if they tell Microsoft that they want it. ( It’s important to note here that they’ve automatically upgraded users using more than 4 GB to the 25 GB plan)

So, Microsoft has played clever here. They aren’t denying their existing users their right to the 25 GB free storage but at the same time they’re making sure that the upgrade is manual, which in turn will help them save on unused storage space that could be utilized by their forthcoming paid customers.

Like always, we at Guiding Tech are on users’, that is, on your side. And we want to ensure that you know how to stay on the huge 25 GB free plan before Microsoft decides to revoke the manual upgrade offer. Here are the steps:

Steps to Do a Quick Manual Upgrade from 7 GB to 25 GB for Free

This will obviously work for only those who had signed up for SkyDrive through their Hotmail or Windows Live accounts in the past and have it active. Another reason for just signing up for free services even though you might not want to use them immediately. You never know when you might need them.

Step 3: You should now see a free storage upgrade button. Click on it.

That’s all of it actually. Nothing more to do. You’ll get a pop-up stating that you have been upgraded to 25 GB of storage meaning you got back what you already had.

You may verify it by checking the storage status under Manage Storage on the same page.

So, props to Microsoft for making the upgrade process as easy as pie but I’d stick to my stand that this was never needed in the first place. Well, something’s always better than nothing so don’t wait for your SkyDrive free storage to fade away – log in to your account now and get this done!

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Written By

Abhijeet Mukherjee is the founder, publisher and editor of Guiding Tech. He's a web publisher who’s been working online full time since 2008. He loves all things tech and has also written for some of the top blogs on the planet.